When the United States (US) Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) convened a hearing on evaluating US’s China policy in an era of strategic competition last week, the tone and tenor of the conversation reflected a rare political and institutional consensus in an otherwise divided America.
If Wendy Sherman, deputy Secretary of State, said that “every single mission” around the world had a “bespoke China strategy”, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense in charge of Indo-Pacific, spoke about how the Pentagon was focused on strengthening its alliance capabilities and developing a more distributed, resilient and lethal force posture in the region.
If the SFRC chair, senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, spoke about how US was falling behind in its diplomacy and needed to invest more resources to take on China, ranking member senator Jim Risch, a Republican, emphasised that despite Ukraine, the US must not take its eyes off China, “the challenge of this century”.
For Senators, the balloon and beyond
The fact that the US had just discovered, and then shot down, a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon — the military has subsequently shot down two more aerial objects over North American skies — lent the Senate hearing a greater sense of urgency. The balloon, perhaps due to the imagery of a foreign object traversing across American continental territory reaching every home, has struck deep in US political consciousness and brought home the security threat posed by China, a sentiment that found reflection in the comments of the senators.
But the hearing went beyond the balloon, with almost everyone who spoke, across party lines, narrowing down on specific dimensions of what they saw as the China challenge.
These included the situation in Taiwan; the treatment of minorities in Xinjiang; China’s “police stations” within the US to go after members of its diaspora who spoke out on human rights as a part of “transnational repression”; the high-technology competition with China; Beijing’s economic practices and theft of intellectual property; the security dynamic in the Indo-Pacific and Pacific islands; the Chinese attempts to “penetrate” the United Nations system; China’s imports of oil from Iran and support to Russia during the war; China’s influence and infiltration in US academia; China’s role in driving illicit fentanyl into the US; Beijing’s influence in the western hemisphere, including Latin America; the lack of Chinese transparency in examining the origins of the Covid-19 virus; and China’s role in the debt crisis afflicting least developed and developing countries.
Menendez, the powerful chair of the committee, told administration officials, “The China challenge affects every region in the world, and you are going to have to do a better job of resourcing these efforts. That means more people in our embassies. That means modernising the way we do business. That means offering an alternative to China.” He said when it came to global competition, right now, China had “the upper hand” and urged the Biden administration to be more “ambitious”. “We have got something in Congress almost unheard of in today’s Washington: bipartisan consensus. I hope you will not squander it.”
His Republican counterpart on the committee, Risch, concurred, “I have said for years that we – Republicans and Democrats, the executive and legislative branches – have to work together if we are going to confront what China is doing. Without that, we will not be successful. This is not a partisan issue. This is a bipartisan issue and an American issue.”
From the questions and comments of the senators, two features stood out. One, lawmakers were focused on highlighting what they saw as the “multidimensional challenge” from China and demanded that the administration do more in the realm of competition — there were only two questions which asked about areas of cooperation with China or the nature of deconfliction mechanisms while all other comments were focused on the competition. Two, when it is hard from the administration to get resources out of the Congress, senators were telling the administration that it needed more resources to compete and that the Congress saw itself as a partner in this fight.
Both features reveal that the political mood in the Senate on China is even more hostile than in the administration. The fact that the House of Representatives, which now has a Republican majority, has created a new committee on the strategic competition with China is evidence that the House wants to keep an even closer watch on the Washington’s response to Beijing than the Senate. Put it together and it becomes clear that in the institutional maze that is DC, every major political actor is competing with the other to adopt a more hardline stance on China. And that is perhaps a reflection of the state of public opinion in today’s America. It is in this political context that the Joe Biden administration is framing and operationalise its China policy.
The State Department’s approach
Sherman, a veteran diplomat who handles China policy in the State Department, acknowledged that China was the “pacing geopolitical challenge” of the era, which will test American diplomacy in ways few issues have. She reiterated the administration’s line that China was the only competitor with the intent and means to reshape the international order. After offering an explanation of why the US shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon, Sherman said, “This unacceptable and irresponsible action put on full display what we have long recognised – that the PRC has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad.”
She spoke about the US’s three-pillar strategy — invest, align, compete with the first focused on boosting America’s capabilities; the second focused on strengthening alliances and partnerships, including Quad; and the third focused on competing effectively in all domains.
Sherman said that the US had instructed its diplomats to engage with the challenge in the Indo-Pacific, in every region, in every continent and that the US was sharing information with partners to highlight the scale and scope of the threat posed by China. “We don’t seek another Cold War. But we do ask that everyone play by the same set of rules. We want to ensure that all countries have the ability to make their own choices, free from coercion. Investing in ourselves and aligning with our partners gives us a stronger hand to compete with the PRC and push back against their aggressive military, diplomatic, and economic practices that seek to coerce other nations, distort markets, and undermine American workers and businesses.”
Offering specific examples of US actions, Sherman said that Washington will oppose Beijing’s “unlawful acts in the South and East China Seas”; bring home unjustly detained American citizens; make clear to Beijing that militarily supporting Russia or evading sanctions will have consequences for its relationship with the US; support the people of Hong Kong; call out human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang; crack down on Chinese entities engaged in “harmful activities”; address China’s “transnational repression” activities; take “decisive steps” to prevent China from exploiting American tech for its military modernisation; and support Taiwan to maintain peace and stability across the Straits.
To do all of this, Sherman pointed out that the State Department had set up a China House mandated with coordinating better across all bureaus and embassies, share information quickly, sharpen communication and adapt to developments. “It will ensure that we see the PRC for what it is: a challenge that touches virtually every issue under the sun – security, trade, technology, human rights, and more… For our country, the PRC is a generational challenge, and there is no higher priority at the State Department than answering it.”
The Pentagon’s report card
If Sherman laid out the diplomatic strategy, Ratner, the key official handling Indo-Pacific affairs in the Department of Defense, brought out the military element of what the US was doing. He said that China was increasingly turning to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “as an instrument of coercive statecraft in support of its global ambitions, including by conducting more dangerous, coercive, and aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region”. In contrast, Ratner elaborated on the US steps to focus on aligning with its partners in the region in three distinct ways.
The first was “strengthening ally and partner capability”. Offering specific examples, Ratner cited the US support to Japan’s decision to acquire counterstrike capabilities; AUKUS, the initiative to help Australia acquire a nuclear powered submarine capability; consultations with South Korea to strengthen deterrence on the Korean Peninsula; and providing Taiwan with additional capabilities. Referring to India, Ratner said, “We are making significant investments in our defense ties with India to uphold a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region. Earlier this month, the US Government launched our inaugural technology initiative (iCET) with India, including in-depth discussions about opportunities for co-production of major defense platforms.”
The second step, Ratner said, was major upgrades in the region to make Americans forward posture “more distributed, resilient, and lethal”. This had included new initiatives in Australia (including including US Bomber Task Force rotations, fighter rotations, and future rotations of Navy and Army capabilities); first US forward deployment of a marine littoral regiment, the Marine Corps’s most advanced formation, to Japan; and the recently announced access for the US military to four more bases in the Philippines.
And the third step, Ratner said, was “networking” allies and partners. This included enhancing US-Japan-Australia trilateral cooperation and US-Japan-South Korea trilateral security cooperation. “We are also working with a range of partners to bring greater transparency to the region, including through the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). This initiative aims to provide space-based maritime domain awareness to countries across the region—including in Southeast Asia, in the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Islands.” This initiative was announced at the last Quad summit and India is a key partner.
The Senate hearing on China provided evidence that all American political and institutional actors are focused now on the one challenge that see as disrupting their global political dominance, economic strength, and value system. This lens is central to understanding US foreign policy in general and its approach to Indo-Pacific and India in particular.
